Wes­ley Gib­bings

Here in T&T yes­ter­day, mind­less­ly an­noy­ing fire­crack­ers notwith­stand­ing, we had the com­fort and de­lights of Di­vali even as vot­ing and the en­su­ing counts con­tin­ued in An­tigua and Bar­bu­da, and Grena­da—where two ref­er­en­da were un­der­way on ac­ces­sion to the Caribbean Court of Jus­tice.

By now we would have al­so had re­sults from yes­ter­day’s midterm elec­tions in the Unit­ed States, while cam­paign­ing for No­vem­ber 12 lo­cal gov­ern­ment elec­tions in Guyana in­ten­si­fies. I have al­so been keep­ing an eye on Fi­ji’s No­vem­ber 14 gen­er­al elec­tion; not on­ly be­cause I am an elec­tions junkie but be­cause, back in 2014, I worked with jour­nal­ists there in prepar­ing them for the first elec­tion since the 2006 coup d'état.

At that time, very few jour­nal­ists in the South Pa­cif­ic coun­try had ever cov­ered an elec­tion and just as many had nev­er vot­ed in their en­tire lives. It was an ex­pe­ri­ence of a life­time if on­ly be­cause the ar­rival of free elec­tions fol­low­ing a forced hia­tus brings with it a sense of free­dom that is vir­tu­al­ly with­out par­al­lel.

Can you imag­ine what it was like in South Africa in 1994? Or in Poland in 1989? As a jour­nal­ist, you some­times have the op­por­tu­ni­ty to brush shoul­ders with his­to­ry. So, yes, I have stood el­bow-length dis­tances from both Nel­son Man­dela and Lech Wale­sa.

Through all of this, the cir­cum­stances that took these mem­o­rable peo­ple to po­si­tions of pow­er and in­flu­ence linger in jour­nal­is­tic con­tem­pla­tion as be­ing at the root of what dis­tin­guish­es civilised so­ci­ety from ex­pe­ri­ences in brutish tyran­ny.

In some in­stances, there have been cas­es of de­mo­c­ra­t­ic re­lapse, while in oth­ers there have been strug­gles to sus­tain a sem­blance of ci­vil­i­ty or even to as­sert a claim of democ­ra­cy where there re­al­ly has been lit­tle or none.

There is some­thing about the prac­tice of jour­nal­ism that al­so draws at­ten­tion to the ef­fec­tive con­duct of democ­ra­cy. This is so part­ly be­cause fun­da­men­tal free­doms, in­clud­ing and par­tic­u­lar­ly free­dom of ex­pres­sion, are among the most vis­i­ble ca­su­al­ties of an ab­sent democ­ra­cy.

I have there­fore tend­ed to use a free speech mea­sure when as­sess­ing the mer­its of claims that elec­tions are be­ing de­mo­c­ra­t­i­cal­ly con­duct­ed. At­tacks on me­dia, for ex­am­ple, usu­al­ly typ­i­fy at­tempts to un­der­mine fair elec­toral process­es.

In this re­spect, and though there are oth­er spec­tac­u­lar ex­am­ples near and far, the Caribbean of­fers up an in­ter­est­ing lab­o­ra­to­ry for fur­ther in­ves­ti­ga­tion.

In Guyana, for in­stance, a mod­el emerged—fol­low­ing post-elec­tion dis­tur­bances in the 1990s—that helped the me­dia com­mu­ni­ty and oth­ers keep tabs on me­dia com­pli­ance with agreed guide­lines as ex­pressed in a wide­ly-sup­port­ed code of prac­tice.

Though, even­tu­al­ly, al­most every­one broke the rules—the State me­dia in par­tic­u­lar—there was a gen­er­al un­der­stand­ing that an en­vi­ron­ment which con­duces to the pur­suit of cer­tain core val­ues of me­dia prac­tice con­sti­tutes a pre­ferred sce­nario and would help bol­ster the cred­i­bil­i­ty and ac­cept­abil­i­ty of elec­tions and their re­sults.

This means that not on­ly are the prin­ci­ples of good me­dia prac­tice de­sir­able but that a gen­er­al en­vi­ron­ment of open­ness and ac­count­abil­i­ty should be in place to en­sure ef­fec­tive ap­pli­ca­tion of such prin­ci­ples.

The Guyana ex­per­i­ment com­pris­es a good work­ing tem­plate for me­dia-watch­ers as­sess­ing the run-up to the two CCJ ref­er­en­da. There is al­so the re­quire­ment of core jour­nal­is­tic val­ues: ac­cu­ra­cy, in­de­pen­dence (politi­cians do not gen­er­al­ly get this one), fair­ness, hu­man­i­ty, and ac­count­abil­i­ty.

Among the lessons of democ­ra­cy then are sat­is­fac­to­ry ob­ser­vance of the re­spon­si­bil­i­ties of all con­tes­tants (among whom work­ing jour­nal­ists do not be­long), to­geth­er with high stan­dards of me­dia per­for­mance. This, of course, does not in­clude the work of pro­pa­gan­dists who thrive on mis­in­for­ma­tion and dis­in­for­ma­tion and the un­der­min­ing, by politi­cians and their cronies, of hon­est fact-checked, fact-seek­ing jour­nal­ism.

Of course, yes­ter­day’s re­sults count for much. And we all, as pri­vate cit­i­zens, had our hors­es in the re­spec­tive races. But let’s learn the lessons that took our neigh­bours, near and far, to this point and act on them when our own turn ar­rives.